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Wednesday, June 28, 2017

Welcome back CRAZIES!!! We are now one month into our two-month CRAZY COMIC CON COUNTDOWN!!! We've seen some pretty cool pics so far, but now it's time dive into what may well be my all-time favorite Comic Con, back in 2012! As Mr. T would say, it's time to "cut the jibber jabber" and jump right in! Enjoy...

Fiona and Finn! Between 2011 and 2013, every con I went to was filled with Finn cosplay! As the show's popularity has waned, so too has its cosplay. Last week I talked about how Regular Show made the all too rare but wise call to end the series while still on top. Well, Adventure Time, sadly, really should've taken a page out of RS' book. That or quit trying to make a stories out of fever dreams!

Tin Fish Square at the Gaslamp Quarter has regularly been taken over by NBC every year since 2012. It's a free event with some pretty cool swag, so as you might imagine, the crowds line up quick! It's a great place to get memorabilia from shows that are usually cancelled by the spring.

The WB booth! The one year I got to set it up also happened to be the year the first Hobbit movie came out! Being a big fan of all things Middle Earth, I was thrilled to work on this booth!

Kato! He beat up several people who mentioned The Green Hornet movie to him!

This might take some explaining here. Basically, Michael Jackson made a movie called Moonwalker that was, well, something to behold. It was really nothing more than an anthology film that attempted to string together several Jackson music videos from his Bad album. The videos were actually quite good; this is Michael Jackson after all. The linking scenes, however, had little to no narrative to them, with anything even close to a plot not surfacing until midway through the movie! At the end, he's revealed to be a Transformer and morphs into a spaceship and blasts off! If you need to reread that last sentence a few times, it's all good. I did too and I'm the one who typed it! Anyway, this was the mask he wore at the start of the transforming sequence before it switched to stop motion. A booth had this and many other props up for sale at highly inflated prices.

The Rogues Gallery. You'd think with all the Batmen running around at this place, these guys wouldn't be so active!

A Comic Con rarity: Safe For Work Disney Princesses!

A Spartan with the Keyblade... I think a Halo/Kingdom Hearts crossover game would be pretty badass!

These guys caused quite a ruckus in the Gaslamp Quarter! Where's a hero when ya need one?!?

The always popular Nintendo Lounge at the Marriott! That's the video game voice of Mario posing for pics! And I still have my Golden Mario Shirt! Nintendo's one of the few companies that seems to understand that some people where XXL sizes!

Rosie the Robot! This is the only know occurrence of Jetsons cosplay at a comic con. And yet I've seen dozens of Fred Flintstones! And yes, you can totally see the face through Rosie's mouth!

I don't recall what this was promoting, but it had a ton of stunts happening throughout the weekend and I think a concert or two as well!

The debut year of the Xbox Lounge! Last year, they switched gears and instead of setting up a lounge, they co-sponsored the free Nerd HQ mini con. It was a pretty good deal, but I missed the Xbox Lounge. They gave out some really cool swag and had awesome displays!

With Spider-man Homecoming a mere weeks away, I figured this would be a good pic to end today's post on. If there's one hero there's never a shortage of at SDCC, it's Spider-man!

And so ends our look back Comic Con 2012, a show that will always be my favorite! I had so much fun walking around with my nephew and niece and doing all the off site stuff. The only downer really was the Dawn of the Con party, but even that had a few cool things at it. It was also the year of my ultimate nerd purchase: The Star Wars Carbon Chamber Set that included a hidden figure of Jar Jar Binks frozen in carbonite! It wasn't cheap, and I had to endure walking around with a pony bag for several hours, but it was worth it to get that figure!

And so ends the month of June here at the CRAZYVERSE! But fear not! We got five more weeks Comic Con Mayhem to keep us going well into the show and beyond! And next week, we'll be kicking July off right with another look back at SDCC 2013, so be sure to come on back and share a laugh! Until then, take care and I'll catch y'all later!

Wednesday, June 21, 2017

Judging by the above picture of me acting like an idiot, I'd say it's time for another post in our CRAZY COMIC CON COUNTDOWN!!! We're moving on up the ladder here, and have hit the rung marked 2011! An up and down year for me, but that's through no fault of the Con. Anyway, I'm sure you came here today for more than just my rambling and a pic of my classic "Bushwood Country Club" shirt. Lets go to Comic Con, shall we? Enjoy...

Being a stagehand gives me access to sights not everyone gets to see, like the beginning stages of the Warner Bros booth being built. Oddly enough, of all the years I've set this show up, I've only loaded in the WB booth once. This was also the first year they didn't have their iconic Water Tower set. That, along with the SyFy Channel's old booth, were SDCC icons for many years. Was sad to see them go.

Sometimes, the best things at SDCC aren't even indoors! The free events outside the con began expanding this year. Even the trolleys got in on the act, covering entire cars in themed wraparounds!

The debut of the Petco Park Interactive Zone! For those who've never been (or merely look at my pics rather than actually read the captions beneath them), the Interactive Zone is a free mini con set up in the parking lot adjacent to Petco Park. TONS of free swag is given out at this site, some of the best of the Con even! It's also a food truck haven where some of San Diego's tastiest set up shop! For this debut year, Marvel Studios, MacAffee Security, Sony and Sharknado put up some pretty fun pavilions for all to experience and enjoy. The real highlight though? People getting their butts handed to them on a mechanical shark*!

*See last year's SDCC2011 post for a pic of the shark!

My nephew, Dante Jr., as Jack Skellington! He was pretty popular on this day. Every girl there wanted a pic with "Li'l Jack" as they were calling him. For a normally shy and reserved boy, he really loved the attention. Li'l Dante is now just a few inches shy of being taller than me! He'll be Big Dante soon enough. On a side note, I made his Bat bowtie and my mom made the suit. The one that the Disney Store was selling wasn't even movie accurate!

Power Rangers... Whatever! I pretty much quit keeping track after the Green Ranger left the first time!

Blanca gets down in the exhibit hall! Moments later, he was ejected from the show after beating up a replica of the 60's Batmobile!

Comic Con just ain't Comic Con without a Sailor Scout. I think it's even written in their bylaws!

A picture of me that was up on the San Diego Union-Tribune's website that roughly 30 friends emailed to me after they saw it... Before I was even aware I was in it! Just glad I wasn't doing something dumb!

The South Park Parade in the Gaslamp Quarter! Sadly, the show's reaching Simpsons level of bad. Not enough people take the Gary Larson approach of quitting while ahead.

Sith Joker! If Disney had bought DC instead, I guarantee this variant would exist in toy form!

SNAAAAAAAAAAAAAARF!!! I felt so bad for this dude. His dedication is amazing, but we were hitting triple digits that weekend!

The Colonel! Depending on where you stand on health matters, he's either a hero or a villain!

This guy REALLY liked his swag bag!

Speaking of shows that were smart enough to quit while ahead, here's the crew from Regular Show! Rigby's brother would be the one offering hugs though!

And so ends another look at Comic Con 2011. At the time of the show, I was going through some pretty serious health and personal issues that made it hard to enjoy the show. I soldiered on though, and among the big deals that happened that weekend, I got to be right next to CM Punk when he "Crashed" the WWE/Mattel Panel! I also met Bret Hart, one of my all-time favorite wrestlers! So despite the bad crap happening elsewhere, I still managed to pull a few rabbits out of my hat that year.

And so ends another week of the countdown! We'll be back next time with a look back at what may have been my best Comic Con ever, SDCC 2012! Until then, take care and I'll catch y'all later!

Wednesday, June 14, 2017

And we are back! It's Week 2 of our CRAZY COMIC CON COUNTDOWN, so rather than give a long drawn out intro, I figured we'd just jump right in! Sound good? Great! But first, a little reminder about the Team Cul De Sac Charity Art Auction at Heroes Con this weekend in Charlotte, NC...

If you love original art and wanna help give Parkinson's Disease a swift kick in the butt, then head on down to Heroes Con in Charlotte this weekend and bid on some pieces in the Team Cul De Sac Art Auction! It's all for a good cause AND you get the chance to own some original CRAZY art! Pretty cool, eh? For more info, check out the Team Cul De Sac blog!

Alright, on with the show! Comic Con 2010, here we come...

The fairly cool Playstation booth. Of all the gaming companies represented at Comic Con, Sony's the only one that doesn't do a free lounge at one of the hotels. Nintendo and Xbox have them, but Sony's like "Nah! Y'all gotta have a badge if y'all wanna see our goods!" Actually, Xbox's lounge was only free once in all fairness, but still!

If there's one thing the Star Warsprequels gave us, it was plenty of colorful new models of Stormtroopers to marvel at!

The actual Red Fraggle Muppet! Loved Fraggle Rock so much as a kid. Too bad The Hub Network dropped the ball big time with it!

I am deathly afraid of heights, but the pursuit of swag makes me do some pretty wild things! I think this 50ft climb netted me a cardboard shield!

An unused custom title belt meant for the Rock sometime between 1998 and 1999. Notice the "F" has been filed out of the WWF attitude logo. It's a nice design, but not fitting of a world championship. That's my biggest gripe with title belts today. They look like friggin hood ornaments! They just don't make them like the classic winged eagle belt anymore.

I know this is from an anime, but don't know which one. Still, the prop is really cool!

All of Downtown San Diego gets into the spirit of Comic Con! Even the trolley system, which changed the station signs into Klingon!

This nifty booth was promoting the Alien BluRay release. People could actually lay inside these things and get the crap scared out of them! As much as I enjoy a good scare, the line was insanely long. Plus, some people literally got the crap scared out of them, so it just didn't seem like the cleanest thing to lay down in!

Always cool to see the hotel wraparounds in the Gaslamp! Most of the movies and games that are promoted on these flop, but they're still fun to look at!

A human My Little Pony! Little did anyone know that the rebooted show would come out a few months later and unleash an unheard of horror upon society!

Ghostbusters in the Gaslamp! They ain't scared of no reboot!

The doomed Battle LA experience was one of the first times a studio took advantage of the grassy park areas of the Gaslamp Quarter to give folks who couldn't get in to Comic Con a free experience to enjoy. The movie may not have been great, but it's the thought that counts! Now this grassy area has all sorts of events take place at it!

Glad to see these two getting along!

I forget what this was promoting, but it sure looked cool!

And that was Comic Con 2010! One of my favorite cons ever! It was the first time they had free events outdoors for all to enjoy, the highlights being The Hub Pavilion at the Marriott and the Clash Of The Titans conquest in the Hilton Park. These free events have grown since and only continue to get better!

Well, that's all for now folks! Next week, we travel back to Comic Con 2011, so be sure to come on down and see what hidden gems I've unearthed from that con! Until then, take care and I'll catch y'all later!

Wednesday, June 7, 2017

As spring turns to summer in San Diego, and the hot winds roll in, they bring with them spirit of hope, the spirit of bravery and the spirit of fun. Yes, my CRAZIES, it is THAT time of year again. COMIC CON IS COMING!!! And this year, we here at the CRAZYVERSE are trying something a little different. Instead of just a few weeks devoted to the event leading into it, we're devoting two whole months to the inspired insanity that is San Diego Comic Con! So grab a Mountain Dew, put on a clean pair of Spider-man underoos and grab a chair, because the CRAZY COMIC CON COUNTDOWN is a go!

But first, I have a little something to talk about that's going on at another con next week. Something that could help a lot of people.

As many of you know, I was a huge fan of the comic strip Cul De Sac by the late Richard Thompson. It was a very sweet little comic that was also hysterically funny and a pleasure to read. Sadly, Mr. Thompson suffered from Parkinson's Disease and fell to the illness last summer. For the last few years, his friend, Chris Sparks, has held a charity art auction at Heroes Con in Charlotte, NC in an effort to raise money for research on a cure. I wanna see this awful disease go away as badly as anyone and so I present to you all this piece for the auction! In it, Alice and her big brother Petey watch as giant versions of the her class pets Mr. Danders, the guinea pig and the usurping Hermit Crab battle it out Kaiju-style! I had a lot of fun working on this one as the Petey's love of monster movies and the bickering of the class pets were two of my favorite tropes of from the strip! For any of you CRAZIES going to Heroes Con from June 16-18, it'll be up for auction! Be sure to bid on it and the many other great art pieces that will be up for sale! Help give Parkinson's Disease a knockout punch and let the legacy of Richard Thompson live on! For more info, check out the Team Cul De Sac blog!

And now, on with the CRAZY COMIC CON COUNTDOWN!!! We set the Wayback Machine all the way back to 2009, my first Comic Con after college! Anyway, enjoy...

Count Dracula and Rob Zombie go way back!

That was me seven years and roughly 40 pounds ago happily sandwiched between two green women! It was so hot in the exhibit hall that weekend that their makeup was melting!

I think Angelina Jolie agrees with this sentiment!

The Black Hole, Disney's misguided attempt at doing a scary Sci-Fi movie. It has it's moments, but it made the mistake of coming out right after Star Wars and Alien which raised the genre to unheard of levels in the public eye! It also didn't help that the predecessors had far better special effects which is pretty amazing considering that both films were low budget while Disney spared no expense with its production. Quality should always win out over quantity. I'll say this for The Black Hole; it does feature some of the most gruesome death scenes ever for a Disney movie!

Captain Jack has a way with the ladies!

Would a group of Predators be called a herd, a gaggle or a collective?

Nice to see Wario behaving for a change!

Mad props for doing Planet of the Apes cosplay! Lord only knows how hot those suits must have been!

The franchise killer. At least the poster looked cool.

Castle Grey Skull... Someday, I will have a mansion and it will look just like this!

Harley and Ivy... Heaven help us!

My pal Riki Medina (Max Sterling for all the gamers out there) chilling with a Sailor Scout. It ain't Comic Con without a Sailor Scout!

Sorry Thor. I haven't seen any Frost Giants lately!

Bounty Hunters! We really do need that scum at the show!

And that was Comic Con 2009! Honestly, the show is kinda fuzzy now as far as memories go. I remember it being the first time I actually had money to spend at the show. I had just graduated from college and as a result, could work instead of dealing with Summer School. I honestly don't know how I pulled it off all those other years being flat broke, but I did!

And so ends week one of the countdown! We got eight more to go so get comfortable as we'll return next week with a look at 2010's show! Until then, take care and I'll catch y'all later!

About Me

Born and raised in San Diego, California, Jon Esparza is a cartoonist on a mission. That mission? He'll tell you as soon as he figures it out. In the meantime, he graduated from San Diego State University in 2009 with a BA in Film and currently working as a stagehand for the Local 122. When he isn't drawing or putting on concerts, he is usually watching movies, reading or sleeping.